The industry offers numerous control mechanisms for use in interacting with various devices in a local setting, such as media playback equipment provided in a user's home or work environment. For instance, a user may build a local network having a control device and one or more media playback devices (e.g., speakers). In operation, an authorized user may interact with the control device to select one or more media items (e.g., songs) for playback on the media playback equipment, e.g., by calling up a list of available media items, and selecting one or more items from the list. While the above approach is relatively straightforward, some users may experience it as cumbersome and inefficient.
The technical literature generally describes more complex man-machine control interfaces compared to the mechanism described above. But these types of interfaces can also be expensive and time-consuming to develop, test and maintain. And once developed, these interfaces can potentially offer uneven performance due to their increased complexity.